Written by

Steve Wieberg

Special for USA Today

Ohio State's Braxton Miller warms up during Wednesday's practice. Miller was 24th in points responsible for in 2012.

More

ADVERTISEMENT

Geno Smith, Kenjon Barner and an assortment of other playmakers have moved on. So has the maddest coaching scientist of them all, Chip Kelly.

Let’s see if that taps the brakes on college football’s souped-up, spread-out, increasingly unstoppable offenses.

The smoke from a host of torched defenses in 2012 still hangs around the land. Even in what the NFL deemed a down season for draft-ready quarterbacks, major-college teams shattered an array of passing, total offense and scoring records:

Quarterbacks completed a combined 60.5 percent of their passes for 238.3 yards per game, both all-time Football Bowl Subdivision records.

Running games surged, too, averaging 4.4 yards per carry (another record) and 179.9 per game (the most since 1988).

Teams produced more than 409 yards and 29.5 points per game in 2012. That didn’t merely break records — of 392.8 yards and 28.4 points, both set in 2007 — it obliterated them.

The college game’s annual turnover in talent starts in the Big 12, where seven of 10 teams are replacing departed senior quarterbacks.

“It’ll be exciting to see who can do what,” said Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, who is expected to turn to junior Blake Bell after the departure of Landry Jones, who started 50 games in the past four years.

Still, from Alabama’s AJ McCarron to Clemson’s Tajh Boyd to Oregon’s Marcus Mariota, 10 of the nation’s 11 highest-rated passers — and 14 of the top 19 — are back. That also counts returning Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel of Texas A&M.

Ohio State junior quarterback Braxton Miller ranked 34th in total offense and 43rd in passing efficiency in 2012. He was 24th in points responsible for.

Oregon’s Kelly is in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles. But with former offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mark Helfrich succeeding him and ex-Nebraska star Scott Frost moving from receivers coach into Helfrich’s old roles, “not much has really been any different for us,” said Mariota, who threw 32 touchdown passes and six interceptions as a redshirt freshman.

Seven times in 2012, he and the Ducks scored more than 50 points in a game. In all, teams hit the half-century mark or better a remarkable 153 times.

Perhaps most telling: On 10 of those occasions — including Baylor twice — it wasn’t enough. They lost.

Hot seats? Really?

They have been at their respective schools for a combined 41 years, won 340 games (or better than eight a season) and coached their teams into 32 bowls.

Can the jobs of Texas’ Mack Brown, Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz and Missouri’s Gary Pinkel really be on the line?

There’s grumbling and speculation at all three schools, at least among the fan bases. The fortunes of their programs have slipped of late — Brown and Texas falling to 11-15 in the Big 12 the past three seasons, Ferentz and Iowa going 10-14 in the same period in the Big Ten, Pinkel and Mizzou enduring a tough Southeastern Conference debut in which the Tigers finished 5-7 overall and 2-6 in the nation’s strongest, most cutthroat league.

Brown has the longest and strongest long-term résumé, including a national championship in 2005 and three other Bowl Championship Series appearances. But he also has presided over 55-17 and 63-21 losses to rival Oklahoma in consecutive seasons.

Texas athletics director DeLoss Dodds is nonetheless dismissive of fan and donor discontent, just as he was when Brown’s early returns with the Longhorns were modest. Iowa AD Gary Barta was supportive of Ferentz at the end of 2012, and he might have little choice with his coach under contract through 2020. Missouri AD Mike Alden similarly was patient when Pinkel’s first teams struggled.

Of course, in an era of higher costs and stakes, schools can ill afford fan and especially donor drift. Witness Auburn, where the glow of a national championship was gone in two years and Gene Chizik was bounced as coach. He was replaced by Gus Malzahn, the offensive coordinator on the title team who spent 2012 as head coach at Arkansas State.

At Texas, Brown said at the end of spring drills he and players “understand that the last three years are not acceptable. They’re not the standard that we’ve set forth for many, many years.”

The Longhorns return junior quarterback David Ash and 18 other starters.

“It’s been a tough couple of years for us, getting it back on track,” Brown said. “But I think we’re about to reap some rewards.”

Mind and muscle

Quick now: Which team enters the season with the SEC’s longest winning streak?

The somewhat startling answer is Vanderbilt, which defeated North Carolina State in the Music City Bowl to cap a seven-game sweep at the end of 2012. The Commodores, under coach James Franklin, have made back-to-back bowl appearances for the first time in their history and are no longer the brainy but physically overmatched outlier in the SEC.

They have high-IQ company.

Northwestern, coming off a 10-3 finish and first bowl win since 1949, looks to be a contender in the Big Ten’s Legends (non-Ohio State) Division. Baylor has produced a Heisman Trophy winner and has bowl wins in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1985 and ’86. Duke is stirring in the Atlantic Coast, looking to build on its first bowl appearance in 18 years.

The four programs’ average Academic Progress Rate, as most recently computed by the NCAA: 980, well more than the passing-grade bench mark of 930. No surprise there.

More notably, 2012 was the first in which all four played into the football postseason. So did Rice (979 APR), Stanford (978) and Notre Dame (973), which didn’t lose until the BCS title game against Alabama.

Stanford could make a run at the championship game this season, returning quarterback Kevin Hogan, one of the nation’s best offensive lines and eight starters on defense.

They do Nietzsche (Friedrich) proud.

And now Nitschke (Ray), too.

Aggies vs. Tide: New rivalry blooms

Long and cherished rivalries died as conferences realigned. But note the rhetoric that came out of Texas A&M during the offseason, directed at new SEC opponent Alabama.

This could be the start of something special.

Texas A&M laid the groundwork in November when the Aggies had the gall — and the goods — to walk into Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa and win 29-24, a lone, stunning speed bump in Alabama’s 14-game march to the national championship.

“What do the moon and Texas A&M have in common?” he said playfully to a crowd of about 800 at a local fundraising event. “We control the Tide.”

It didn’t take long for a small retail chain in College Station to follow up with a T-shirt bearing the school’s block-letter logo over a silvery moon, with the money line — WE CONTROL THE TIDE! — inscribed below.

There was no immediate response from Alabama. Coach Nick Saban and the Tide are no doubt saving that for Sept. 14, when they get their next on-the-field crack at A&M.

Cohabitating the SEC’s West Division, the two programs will meet every year.

One other condition for a compelling rivalry: It must be competitive. Saban has built ’Bama for the long term. The Aggies must be, too.

And this year's BCS buster is ...

Northern Illinois was a feel-good story for some at the end of 2012, a BCS imposter to others and did little to dissuade the latter in falling 31-10 to Florida State in the Orange Bowl.

The Huskies could get a second shot, contingent on a) winning at Iowa or at Purdue or both in this season’s first month; b) going on to run the table again in the Mid-American Conference; and c) the MAC again raising its collective rating by beating on the rest of the Big Ten and other marquee leagues.

Northern Illinois’ coach, promoted offensive coordinator Rod Carey, is new. Much of the starting defense will be, as well. But the quarterback is not.

Jordan Lynch injected himself into the Heisman Trophy conversation in 2012, drawing three first-place votes and finishing seventh as he set a major-college record for rushing yardage by a quarterback with 1,815 yards and accounted for 44 touchdowns (25 passing, 19 rushing).

The better BCS darkhorse might be Fresno State, the favorite in the West Division of the expanded Mountain West and led by its own special quarterback.

Derek Carr, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound little brother of former overall No. 1 draft pick David Carr, threw for 4,104 yards and 37 scores as a fourth-year junior and was the nation’s 15th-highest rated passer. He was one spot ahead of Manziel and higher than eight of the 11 quarterbacks who were picked in this year’s NFL draft.

Fresno State’s nonconference schedule, featuring Rutgers and Colorado, is manageable. Statement time is Sept. 20, when Carr and the Bulldogs draw Boise State at home. There also will be the matter of the Mountain West’s first championship game Dec. 7.